`Censored' lets work be seen

January 27, 2006|By Web Behrens, Special to the Tribune

Look behind the caution tape. In fact, walk right past it. Yards and yards of the yellow warning ribbon that's typically intended to keep people away criss-cross the storefront windows of The Art House in Oak Park.

This time the tape is an invitation to look closer.

Inside, the gallery's walls are covered with what the gallery says is volatile art--the sort of stuff, according to the show description, that some people would rather you never see.

A sculptural installation rises up off the gallery floor. It's hard to miss, a blackened life-size skeleton clutching an old metal gas can and a lighter. Wisps of smoke trail out of the can (a visual trick created by burning incense). An American flag serves as a cape and hood, affixed to the skull with aviator goggles. It's called "The Self-Immolation of America, a.k.a. Don't Let the Stars and Stripes Get In Your Eyes," by local artist Dean Hacker.

On the wall, a simple ink drawing exclaims "Let's Find Somebody to Hate!" in big block letters. The image, by local artist Greg Phillips, recalls an editorial cartoon in its style, not to mention its content, which depicts eight figures: the usual suspects in a hate-mongers parade (Adolf Hitler, a hooded Klansman) as well as others that might give the viewer pause (a Christian preacher, a Muslim cleric, a military man in camouflage).

There's also a little sexual charge to some of the stuff in the show. Two women kiss. Two naked men recline. A video on a TV monitor shows one man shaving his body in the bathtub. A Detroit-based artist uses photo manipulation to satirize former attorney general John Ashcroft's nervousness about women's breasts by superimposing his face on a bare female torso.

The exhibition is titled "Censored ... or Should Be" and runs through Feb. 22. Some of the work on display apparently has in fact been officially censored in one way or another.

The show's stated intention is noble enough: to showcase art that's perhaps been deemed improper, immodest or unpatriotic. In execution, the unapologetically liberal exhibit captures just two species of controversy in its net: the works either push people's political buttons or challenge sensibilities about nudity and sexuality. A third category of controversial art--the religious (or, perhaps, sacrilegious)--goes unrepresented.

"I've been censored more than once," show coordinator Elizabeth Granton says, "and I know other artists have had this problem. The feeling of doing a piece and wanting to show it and not being able to--it's a really horrible feeling."

Show-goers might reasonably debate the semantics of the label "censored" as used here. There's a difference between a government official seizing artwork (which happened at the School of the Art Institute in 1988--see the timeline) and, say, a newspaper refusing to print a particular photograph or a gallery electing not to hang a certain painting, as is the case in a few of the works.

Last summer, Hacker discovered a Chicago gallery had refused to display "The Self-Immolation of America," even though he had paid them to showcase his art. When he visited the gallery, he discovered his flag-draped skeleton was actually being kept behind a curtain.

"I can see that being a confrontational piece in a lot of ways to a lot of different people, and I welcome that confrontation," Hacker says. Still, he adds, "I was very careful and cautious not to disgrace the flag. There's no paint, there's no glue on the flag. I was even so careful, in transporting the piece, not to let the flag touch the ground."

CENSORSHIP IN CHICAGO

On the occasion of the show at The Art House, here's some noted moments in the censorship of art. The collision of sensibilities between artists and communities became particularly volatile in the late '80s and early '90s, when conservative federal lawmakers attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing allegedly offensive art. NEA chairman John Frohnmayer resigned in 1992 in the aftermath of the controversy over the use of government funds in the exhibition of homoerotic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, who died in 1989. But the artists and institutions of Chicago were not mere bystanders in this round of culture wars.

- May 1988: School of the Art Institute student David K. Nelson displays a portrait of the late Mayor Harold Washington, who had died in office less than six months earlier. The frowning mayor is depicted in frilly white lingerie. A small delegation of Chicago alderman, backed by police, seize the painting from the school and carry it off in a squad car. Eventually, a judge rules that the aldermen violated Nelson's First Amendment rights.

- February 1989: Art Institute student Scott Tyler's installation "What is the Proper Way to Display the American Flag?" shows a photograph of flag-draped coffins with a ledger nearby encouraging people to record their comments. The fillip: A real flag lies on the floor in front of the photo and ledger. Veterans groups protest the desecration. One year later, school officials decide not to include the piece in a exhibition of 165 graduating students' work.

- 1990: CTA officials refuse to allow a public-service ad on buses or in "L" stations. Designed by a collective of AIDS activists and artists, "Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed and Indifference Do" shows three mixed-race and -gender couples kissing. New York City had previously displayed the poster.